The world is getting its first actual look at China's Jade Rabbit robotic probe on the moon with a remarkable video taken during the historic landing of the Chang'e 3 mission Saturday.

A video with footage taken by an on-board camera as the Chinese probe descended to the lunar surface was posted to Facebook hours after the landing was reported a success, marking the first unmanned mission to the moon in over 40 years.

Xinhua, the Chinese government's official news service, reported the Chang'e 3 craft began its descent just after 1300 GMT (9 p.m. Beijing time), and touched down in Sinus Iridum (the Bay of Rainbows) 11 minutes later.

After the Chang'e 3 landing module dropped into the moons' atmosphere and fired thrusters to perform the first soft landing there since 1976, the remote-controlled vehicle rolled down a ramp lowered by the Chang'e 3 lander and onto the Sinus Iridum volcanic plain.

The Chang'e-3 mission landed about 12 days after blasting off from a site in the southern area of Xichang, atop a Chinese Long March 3B rocket.

The Jade Rabbit is expected to operate for about three months while the lander will continue to work on the moon's surface for about a year.

The six-wheeled Rabbit can reportedly climb slopes of up to 30 degrees and travel up to 660 feet per hour. It carries an array of high-tech instruments, including two panoramic cameras, engineering and navigation cameras, an arm-mounted alpha particle X-ray spectrometer to analyze chemical elements in rocks and soil, an infrared spectrometer to study minerals, and a ground-penetrating radar to map the structure of lunar soil and crust down to several hundred feet.

The lander carries an optical ultraviolet telescope for astronomy, an ultraviolet camera to monitor space weather and a special camera it used to view its descent to the surface.

Both the rover and lander are powered by solar panels, although some reports also suggest they also carry radioisotope heating units containing plutonium-238 to keep them warm during night hours.

"China's lunar program is an important component of mankind's activities to explore [the] peaceful use of space," Sun Huixian, a space engineer with the Chinese lunar program, told Xinhua.

According to Chinese space scientists, the Chang'e 3 mission is designed to test new technologies, gather new data and build intellectual expertise. It's also the intention of the Chinese government to test for valuable mineral resources that could be mined.

The rover's name, Jade Rabbit, was picked through an online contest and inspired by an ancient Chinese myth about a rabbit living on the moon as the pet of the lunar goddess Chang'e.